
Class 

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THE PREACHER. 



[For the Ambassador. 

THE MARTYR PRESIDENT: 

A Discourse Preached on the Anniversary 
of the Death of Abraham Lincoln) in the 
Church of the Redeemer, Cincinnati, 0. 



BY REV. A. D. MAYO. 



" He beiug dead yet speaketh." — Heb. xi. 4 
The President of the United States, by 
proclamation, ordered the departments of 
the National Government at Washington 
to be closed yesterday, in solemn observ- 
ance of the Martyrdom of Abraham Lin- 
coln. To-day, the American people will 
spontaneously commemorate his death 
by public ceremonies, by services in thou- 
sands of Christian churches, and by the 
almost adoring gratitude of millions of 
afflicted hearts. 

This is not a day for statesmen or 
ministers of religion to open afresh the 
wounds of the past, to inflame partisan 
animosities, or to heap execration on the 
fallen foes of the country. Dreadfully 
have our enemies sinned against God and 
mankind, aud only future ages can reveal 
the full enormity of the folly and despot- 




ism that drove them into such a war. It 
opened by firing upon the only flag on 
earth that symbolized the coming free- 
dom of all men. It revolved through 
four ghastly years, of such horrors as 
Americans will blush to read in future 
days. It closed with the assassination of 
the best man who in modern times has 
been called to rule any people. But oh, 
how terribly has that crime been punish- 
ed 1 Could any man now pass all over 
the territory which five years ago burst 
out into the insanity of rebellion, and 
hold in his mind what he saw of death, 
and sickness, and starvation ; of poverty, 
of the annihilation of families, of the com- 
plete overthrow of governments and in- 
stitutions, of the prostration of religion, 
of the utter ruin of society down to its 
foundation-stones, which are all thrown 
up as by an earthquake, he would stand 
aghast, and forget vengeance and hatred 
in amazement at what the Almighty had 
done. Never was such an outrage upon 
* human society contemplated, as when the 
fifteen Slave States of this Union attempt- 
ed, five years ago, to rear a slave empire 
on the ruins of the American Republic ; 
and never was a people so utterly crushed 
in so short a time. Were they left to 
themselves to-day, they would drift 
through anarchy to civil perdition ; and 
only because we have hold of them, and 
God has hold of us, have they any hope 
of a new civilization. Surely their pun- 
ishment is enough for them ; enough for 
the warning of mankind through long 
ages to come. It is demonstrated that 
what they tried to do can never succeed 
in a world governed by a God of justice 
and love. To-day, then, let their crimes 
and sufferings be forgotten and forgiven, 
as far as a sacred regard for liberty and 



order will permit ; and let us turn to the 
more pleasing task of contemplating the 
character and example of him who, being 
dead, yet speaketh, with a voice more 
potent than that of any monarch now 
upon the earth. 

There are two classes of great public 
men who rise to speedy fame, and remain 
as fixed-stars in the reverence of mankind. 
The first class are, the great military 
chieftains, who deliver their country from 
imminent peril, like Cincinnatus and Sci- 
pio, Marlborough and Frederick, Wel- 
lington and Grant. But their fame, 
though permanent and genuine, is like 
that of noted discoverers, inventors, or 
material benefactors of the race. It is 
honor for a special work of physical de- 
liverance, and has little to do with the 
personal character of the object. The 
most popular man in America now is the 
Lieutenant-General, and yet no public 
man is so little known, as far as concerns 
his opinions, personal character, and his 
qualifications for anything save splendid 
military success. Wellington was always 
rather an iron statue to his countrymen 
than a man. Frederick and Marlborough 
had eccentricities and faults enough to 
kill a hundred men less eminent for great 
military services. Every American hon- 
ors Winfield Scott, but no American is 
edified when he makes a speech or writes 
a book. This sort of fame is genuine, 
but it is not of that kind which rests on 
personal reverence and love for the no- 
blest qualities of manhood, tried in all 
possible emergencies of human responsi- 
bility. 

But there is another, smaller, class of 
men, like William of Orange, Washing- 
ton, and Lincoln, whose death is but the 
signal for the almost unanimous rever- 



ence of the civilized world. While they 
live, like others, they divide men into 
fierce parties ; are assailed by bitter foes 
and disappointed friends ; are pronounced 
iucompetent, incumbrances on the good 
cause they serve. They oftener than oth- 
erwise fall martyrs to truth and freedom. 
But when they really pass away, the 
world seems to recognize at once the 
sort of men they were, and henceforth no 
man can safely utter words of disparage- 
ment. Read, in the speeches and writ- 
ings, and early history of the Republic, 
the bitterness of jealousy and hatred 
against Washington, during the twenty 
years when he , was the Father ol the 
People. Much that was then said may 
have been partially true ; but what man 
with any regard for his own reputation 
would reiterate those charges now? There 
were things as offensive and insultiug 
said and written against Abraham Lin- 
coln, in the household of his friends, up 
to the day of his death, as were ever 
hurled against the worst President of the 
Republic ; but would the most malignant 
rebel utter aloud such aspersions to-day, 
without a feeling of meanness and re- 
morse ? The race must have ideals — men 
that can be held up as models to the 
young in all generations. No man is ac- 
tually good enough to deserve this per- 
fect approval of humanity. But human- 
ity is not strong enough to go on the 
road to progress without the help of men 
who shall form a chain from the average 
mass up through society, to the Saviour, 
and to God. The common instinct of 
the civilized world fastens on the eminent 
few, as such ideals and guides; and that 
verdict is never annulled: and no critic 
or censor is so universally and justly des- 



pised as he who .attempts to destroy this 
historical estimate by parading the hu- 
man frailties of its venerable object. 

Abraham Lincoln is probably to-day 
more honored, admired and loved all over 
the world, among all orders of men, than 
any character in human history. The 
reputation of William of Orange and 
Cromwell is limited by walls of religious 
prejudice and race. Washington chal- 
lenges the veneration of the historian, the 
statesman, the leading progressive classes 
in all lands. But Lincoln is the friend 
of man. The emperors and statesmen of 
the world honor the man who has saved 
a continent from anarchy. The loyal 
people of the loyal United States confess 
that only such a man could have held 
them together, and at once learned and 
interpreted their best ideas. The friends 
of the Union admire the skill with which 
he earned the nation through a great 
war, with no State lost and the national 
honor unstained — yet, leaving its con- 
quered enemies no cause to complain and 
no excuse for further resistance. The 
negro race, that bids fair to become in 
process of time a numerous and import- 
ant element in human affairs, will always 
hold him second to the Saviour of the 
world ; and all over the world the masses 
of the laboring, progressive and aspiring 
people, who long for more liberty and 
light, will cherish his memory as no other 
man was ever loved. A reporter of the 
New York press lately spent a night in 
visiting the lowest haunts of lust and vi- 
olence in that city, and saw in every hovel 
he entered a picture of the Martyred 
President. Even in death, he conquered 
the class that furnished his assassins ; and 
now, from high to low, he reigns first in 
the affections of a grateful world. 



Tins reverence is not accidental or 
transient, or founded on ignorance of the 
real character of the man. No ruler in 
history was so well known to so many 
people during his life. He lived before 
the world, and in his breast was no dark 
concealment of motive or policy. Man- 
kind is the only final critic and judge ; 
and when the verdict comes up from ev- 
ery order of men so unmistakably as in 
the case of Abraham Lincoln, there is no 
danger of a reversal of judgment. That 
great fame of his rests on imperishable 
foundations. He was the most valuable 
kind of a man for the ruler of a nation in 
a crisis in human affairs, and he was one 
of the best men of his kind the world 
ever saw. 

The deep foundations of his manhood 
were laid in a profound and unaffected 
piety, and a reverence for man as the di- 
vine child of God. He was no theolo- 
gian ; no sectarian partisan ; not accus- 
tomed to .sound the praises of great reli- 
gious sects, which are supposed to com- 
mand influence and votes. And many 
who saw only his common-sense, shrewd, 
or humorous estimate of men, accused 
him of levity in sacred things, and indif- 
ference to human freedom. But never 
did man more humbly and patiently wait 
on God than he. Never was there a ruler 
of men who so truly loved and revered 
the least, or so easily forgave the worst 
of men. 

It is so common in public station to 
find men who have no faith in anything 
higher than force and statecraft; devour- 
ed by unholy ambition ; contemners of 
the rights of man and defiant of God's 
higher law, that all men turned instinct- 
ively to one who was as religious, and as 
ready to be guided by Providence, as a 
little child. Hasty spirits ridiculed and 



abused him because he declined to rash 
upon great changes in advance of the 
convictions of the people. But he knew 
that in such things as the relations of 
human society God is slowly educating 
the men of every generation from point 
to point ; and to push on, regardless of 
this natural growth of sentiment, is only 
to tempt civil and social destruction. He 
felt, from the day he was elected to the 
great office he adorned, that his lot was 
cast in one of the great eras of history. 
He wished, first of all, to be the humble 
agent of God's purpose in the uplifting 
of man. He feared to get in the way of 
the majestic laws of national destiny. So 
his movements were as slow as the steps 
of Providence ; and when he put down 
his foot, men felt that now indeed the 
hour of the freedom of man had come. 

How simple, and yet how reverent and 
strong, was his conduct on the Proclama- 
tion of Emancipation. He heard all that 
all kinds of men had to say, with a pa- 
tient mind. He bore the taunts of those 
friends of liberty whose zeal outran their 
knowledge. He forgot the threats of 
vengeance that stole up to him from the 
dark places of despotism. He fortified 
himself in all the legal aspects of the great 
cause. He repressed his generals who 
proclaimed the New Republic at the head 
of armies. Slowly did he see the hand 
nearing the hour on the dial-plate of the 
nation's history. At length, the North 
was invaded, and, as he said to Mr. 
Chase, he resolved, one night, lying in 
his bed, meditating on the state of the 
country, that if it should please God to 
drive the army of Lee out of Pennsylva- 
nia, he would proclaim freedom to the 
slaves. Lee was driven from Pennsylva- 
nia, and Mr. Lincoln said, " I wish he had 



been driven further ; but I have got to 
do it, and I will issue the proclamation." 
Only a mind like his could thus, at the 
end of its own power and wisdom, take 
the hand of God Almighty, and submit 
to be led like a little child into the act 
that would he a heritage of everlasting 
fame. 

Thus founded on a genuine religious 
faith, which was a perpetual guide and 
support to his troubled career, he built 
up on such foundations one of the rarest 
executive characters among men. He 
combined, as no man of our country has, 
the complete consecration to the idea of 
hixman progress with the wisest circum- 
spection in dealing with masses of men 
and deeply- rooted insitutions of society. 
The country was thronged with sincere 
lovers of liberty and humanity, who knew 
little of the actual state of American af- 
fairs, and who, so that a good end were 
sought, were reckless about the steps to 
success. There were even men who be- 
lieved so devotedly in order, peace and 
outward concord, that they would permit 
none to be sacrificed to save these. Be- 
tween these fierce parties in the state, he 
walked in constant martyrdom. He was 
so sympathetic, that he felt through his 
soul all that was thought and said of him, 
and died daily in the slaughter and sor- 
rows of his countrymen. But he loved 
liberty so much better than its heedless 
advocates, that nothing could persuade 
him to put it in peril by rash attempts to 
establish it beyond the power of the peo- 
ple to sustain it. He loved order, and 
law and peace so much better than the 
peace and order and law faction, that he 
determined to lay the foundations of per- 
petual union in the freedom of all men in 
America. While wielding greater power 



than any tyrant on earth, the commander 
of a million soldiers, he so blended rigor 
and moderation that when the war was 
done his mighty armies melted away, and 
peace and law came back as quietly as 
the sun rises after a stormy night. 

It is the hardest thing to convince men, 
in the moment of their passion and hot 
haste, that this is the true executive man- 
hood which succeeds. But when the suc- 
cess comes, all men applaud and worship 
the great leader and organizer of liberty ; 
though they so quickly turn again into 
their old ways of narrowness. But this 
sort of men hold society together. Eve- 
ry neighborhood would explode into a 
Babel once a month, were it notfor a few 
wise men and women who love liberty 
and order, and know how to teach the 
two to move in accordant steps. Every 
nation that does anything for man is guid- 
ed by such men, who teach the ignorant, 
selfish, violent masses to respect human- 
ity a little more, and consent to some 
slight advance for human good. Ameri- 
ca might as easily have been hurled into 
the pit of military despotism or chronic 
anarchy during the last five years, as 
France, or Germany, or Italy has been, 
again and again. There were generals 
enough to play the dictator ; politicians 
enough to head as many factions as the 
days of the year. But, though there nev- 
er was such a revolution on earth, society 
was undisturbed in every loyal village in 
the land ; and though the earth swarmed 
with armed hosts, and a girdle of war- 
ships answered each other's signals round 
three thousand miles of ocean and river- 
coast, no general or admiral for one in- 
stant wrenched the sword from the hands 
of that kindly and paternal Commander- 
in-Chief He guided us over the awful 



perils of the disruption of slave society | 
so gradually and natuially, that we hard- 
ly recognize to-day that we are on the 
other side of a deluge that threatened to 
engulf a continent, and pour its devastat- 
ing flood through all the world. 

His patriotism was only his religion 
and his wise conduct of affairs applied to 
his country. He loved America because 
he thought it was the promised land, 
where mankind could achieve a higher 
estate than ever before. He loved the 
Union, because in it he saw the Provi- 
dential method of securing the highest 
good of man in the Republic. He loved 
his country in the line of his love for God 
and man, and tenth and civilization. He 
loved it so fondly, that he spoke, and 
thought, and acted almost impersonally ; 
and' in his halting, thoughtful, sometimes 
awkward, but always onward career, it 
seemed as if the Great Republic itself 
had entered into him, and made him its 
representative. He aspired to no fame, 
no notoriety, no leadership that separated 
him for an instant from his sivffering 
country. Only too grateful if he could 
learn its destiny, and be borne upon the 
topmost wave of its majestic advance, he 
did not aim at the impossible creative 
power which is the insanity of strong 
but irreverent agitators of men. He was 
no agitator, but an administrator of the 
purposes of God respecting the people of 
his native land. 

He had that noble incapacity to hate, 
even his enemies, which is the true indi- 
cation of the grandest order of manhood. 
When Jesus said, "Love your enemies," 
I suppose he could hardly conceive how 
anybody could hate or despise the worst 
man. He could pity him ; could punish 
him, for correction; could see God's re- 



tributions go over him ; but could neither I 
despise nor hate. So I doubt if Lincoln 
could have hated the worst sinner, or 
permanently despised the greatest fool in 
America. Many violent people talked of 
that as his weakness ; as if it were not 
the easiest thing for any bad-tempered 
man to curse, or any supercilious man to 
despise almost everybody. It was his 
strength, the divine manhood in him, his 
likeness to God, that made him so tender 
to all the rebellious children of the Re- 
public ; so ready to welcome them home, 
whenever they would come back and 
share our common lot. It was no lack 
of courage, no amiable folly, that sealed 
his lips and kept his heart soft — even 
when the men he trusted were toiling to 
upset him, and throw disparagement up- 
on his motives and disgrace upon his 
name. He knew that they would yet be 
led up to high places to testify to his sin- 
cerity and patriotism, and held his peace. 
So, when the war was done, his enemies 
were ready to submit to his clemency. 
He died, leaving no printed or spoken 
word that held contempt or malice for 
any child of God. 

It would be a pleasant task to delineate 
yet other features of this rare though 
simple manhood : his unpretending cour- 
age, and dauntless fortitude, and tireless 
industry, and unwearied patience and per- 
sistence, that challenged time itself; we 
might describe his homely yet almost 
saintly ambition to deserve well of his 
country, and do some good thing for his 
fellow-beings ; and his intellectual power, 
so like the half-conscious working of 
Providence itself; so admirably adapted 
to let in light on every side of that broad 
and comprehensive manhood ; so original 
and natural in its processes ; so clear in 



its results ; so on the level of men's real 
thought, and apt to behold the real value 
of human affairs ; so ready to see rising 
merit, though his wondrous patience often 
bore all things from men he hoped yet to 
save for their country's weal. But we 
can not say these things. For genera- 
tions to come, our children, and they who 
follow them, will dwell fondly on this 
theme ; and never will the American peo- 
ple be less grateful than to-day, that Hea- 
ven gave such a man to the Union and 
the world. 

And, now, may his nobility shame us 
out of our narrowness, our hot wrath, our 
partisan fury, our impatience with Provi- 
dence, our mischievous readiness to re- 
kindle the flames of war, and make this 
wound of one half of the nation a chronic 
malady of the Republic. Let those who 
have been defeated so utterly confess that 
God was against them, and resolve to 
help us once more rebuild the waste places 
in a broader and statelier fabric of human 
rights. Let those who chafe under the 
slow growth of a Christian civilization 
remember that God has His own times, 
and only asks them to do their own work 
and be content. Oh, it will be a shame- 
ful thing if now, with all our prospects 
for the grandest success ever vouchsafed 
to any people, we put liberty and order 
again in peril ! Forbid it, father of our 
country, who toiled and died to bring us 
where we are ! Forbid it, our Father 
in heaven, who rulcst over the nations of 
the earth, and guidest all human desti- 
nies towards eternal love and peace ! 



